Even before the Blitz began in England in September 1940, city officials had feared German air attacks here in New York.

“Knowing that his city would be a prime target, [Mayor La Guardia] believed it was imperative that New York City begin taking steps to protect itself,” writes Lorraine B. Diehl in Over Here! New York City During World War II.

In June 1940, “In addition to 62,000 air-raid wardens, the mayor was asking for 28,000 specially trained volunteers to manually turn off the city lights in the event of a blackout. A fire auxiliary force was already being trained, and volunteer ‘spotters’—who would remain on rooftops should enemy planes attack—were being canvassed.”

This 1940 poster, by editorial cartoonist Rollin Kirby, pulls no punches letting New Yorkers know how devastating a similar attack here would be.

It and other vintage posters are on display starting Friday at Swann Galleries and will go up for auction August 4.

“None of these writers could be considered more than semi-bohemians, but the Village could put in a partial claim to America’s first true bohemian, Edgar Allan Poe. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, Poe lived at 85 West Third Street, 1131/2 Carmine Street, 137 Waverly Place, and 130 Greenwich Street—at all of which he is said to have written ‘The Raven’ and at none did he live abstemiously.”

Bohemianism in the U.S. was born in the 1850s at Pfaff’s, a bar at either 653 or 647 Broadway (sources list both addresses), where artists, writers, and freethinkers hung out.

Poe was dead by the time these early bohemians emerged, but scholars credit him as their inspiration. He’s been nicknamed the “spiritual guide” of bohemia and called its patron saint.

If you were a guy who could only swing $2.75 per night in 1970 but really wanted a room of your own in the West Village, then the New Greenwich Hotel may have been your best option.

This ad comes from the December 2, 1970 New York Post. If separate showers are a main selling point, it was probably pretty rundown.

Interestingly, the handsome block-wide building at 160 Bleecker was built as a lodging house for poor gentlemen almost a century earlier, in 1896.

It was Mills House Number One, a clean hostel that encouraged residents to get a steady job. Mills hostels were the brainchild of philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills; three existed in New York City by 1904.

Perhaps this tiny lane—which starts on the north side of Bleecker Street east of Lafayette Street and ends about 50 feet later—was a rough place where you got your shins kicked in.

Maybe it was the dumping ground for animal bones. [In 1934, photo from the NYPL digital collection]

In any event, it was laid out in 1825, according to a 1957 New York Times article, and in apparently was more substantial back then.

“It winds northward from between 41 and 43 Bleecker Street, and turns westward and again northward, coming out at 1 Bond Street and then on to Great Jones Street,” explains another Times article, from 1897.

“The alley is paved and flagged, and has for years, after nightfall, been the haunt of a crowd of idle young fellows, who give the police a good deal of concern.”

[Shinbone Alley today, now just a driveway ending at the back of Bond Street. Paved with Belgian blocks though.]

Forget the myth of the small-town girl being whisked off to Los Angeles to become a star. Many of Hollywood’s biggest leading ladies and sex symbols hail from big-city Brooklyn.

Barbara Stanwyck (left) was born Ruby Stevens in Flatbush in 1907. She had it rough: Her mother was killed when a stranger pushed her from a streetcar, and Barbara bounced around foster homes until getting a foothold as a Ziegfeld girl at 15.

Mae West, aka Mary Jane West (right), comes from Bushwick. Born in 1893, she got her start performing at the Royal Theater on Fulton Street.

I don’t know what neighborhood Clara Bow (left) grew up in, but reportedly her strong Brooklyn accent worked against her when she started acting in the teens.

Rita Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino (right), didn’t stay in Brooklyn long; her family moved to L.A. in the 1920s.